Volume 11 – Number 12

Dec 1980

Japan’s Rimpa Masters

The Sukhodays School

Sacred Paintings of the Yao

Yeti Quest – Haunting the Himalayas

Luang Prabang in the Calm

Liao’s Gates and Grids

Sri Lanka’s Senanayake

Cover. Daoist Immortal Riding Carp, by Watanabe Shiki (1683 – 1755); hanging scroll, ink and colors on paper. The painting was one of 50 Rimpa masterpieces in the recent exhibition, “Exquisite Vision: Rimpa Paintings from Japan” held in Honolulu and New York. Photograph courtesy of the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Humor and mystery open this issue with the soft touch of a Calcutta conman and eerie wail of Kyongju’s Emillie Bell (SCENE). Desmond Doig has spent his life with Yeti legends of the Himalayas. His reminiscences are followed by a glimpse of old Luang Prabang in the new Laos (GO EAST).

“Neglected Masters of Rimpa” by Howard A. Link of the Honolulu Academy of Arts profiles an exhibition of 50 screens and paintings of the Japanese decorative school.” Genesis of Happiness” is how art historian Rajeshwari Ghose translates the Sanskrit-derived name Sukhodaya, a school of Buddhist sculpture that gave Thailand its golden age of religious art. Noted Hong Kong historian Colin Crisswell traces the lives and times of the colony’s taipans.

Daoist paintings from the Yao hill tribes of Thailand have generated keen interest among collectors in recent years. (ORIENTALIA). Taiwan artist Liao Shiou-ping creates a unique exercise in yin and yang using Western print-making techniques, while Sri Lanka’s Senaka Senanayake continues a distinguished painting career begun at the age of six.